Samsung is releasing a 10-megapixel camera phone, which includes a 3X and 5x digital zoom lens and other features that are usually found only in standalone digicams, but it’s bound for the market only in Korea.
Like some of the company’s previous phones, the SCH-B600 is styled to look like a conventional digital still camera from one side and a bar-type cell phone from the other side. The high-end camera phone made its debut at the Cebit exhibition in Germany in March.
When it launches next month, the Zune will cost $250 for 30 GB, which is just like the equivalent iPod. But the Zune also has Wi-Fi for wirelessly trading songs; a larger, 3-inch screen (good for widescreen movies); and will connect to Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace music service, which will sell songs at 99 cents each and offer a $15 a month subscription plan.
Never mind the “remastered” iPods, the souped-up PCs and the plans to bring Web video to your television that Apple has shown off in recent months. Apple enthusiasts and some investors want the company to roll out a mobile phone. And Chief Executive Steve Jobs, who takes as much care managing Apple’s press as he does overseeing its products, isn’t doing anything to discourage them. This summer, he let Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer raise hopes for a phone by telling analysts that the company isn’t “sitting around doing nothing” about the wireless market.